Hey Tex!
She's a beauty. Only thing that will make her prettier is blue sky around her
As for CG, I've set mine to the "nonminal" position which is just a hair aft of the spar. It can go back farther . . . but for maiden, I'd recommend a touch more forward -- middle of the spar and work it back to your taste. On mine, "nominal" feels fairly close to neutral, and the aft position is known to be tail heavy. Most of what I've seen online says the leading edge of the spar is still safe, so middle of the spar should be a good place to start.
As for failsafe . . . that exists entirely in the RX. When it looses signal, it's the backup plan it uses. There are a few brands that the failsafe can be adjusted through the radio, but for DSM RX's it's done either through the bind process or not at all(some RXs don't have a failsafe). power the plane down, plug in the bind plug, power up the radio, hold the channel positions you desire (throttle down, spoilers extended, rudder ~1/3, and elevator adjusted to encorage a somewhat downward spiral). power up the plane, and if all works well the RX will remember the positions. Pull the bind plug and power down the TX to verify.
a few caveats:
- Failsafe sometimes only works for the first 4 flight channels. some do, some don't. if your spoilers are mapped to an Aux channel, it may not respond.
- Some RX's have a fixed fialsafe (throttle to 0, all else to middle), Some retain the last position (IIRC, none of the DSM RX's do that) and some don't have ANY failsafe (signals simply stop). In either case, most ESCs will simply stop, and in the second case the servos may go limp.
I'd advise running a range check (as always) and then maidening *WITHOUT* setting the failsafe. get a feel for her at lower altitudes, and when you get a chance (and before you go hunting for that boomer) find a sweet-spot in the controls that will throw her into a somewhat flat spiral. This is what you'll set your failsafe to. Set that, and go find that boomer
As for Programming . . . Id recommend sticking to TAER order with a few adjustments -- connect the rudder to aileron (so it flies off one stick) and plug one spoiler to the rudder channel (so it can respond to a failsafe) and the other to AUX1 (I've servo Y-ed mine together, but that makes sub-trim unavailable) . . . then we'll play with the mixing.
- Mix -100% Rudder -> Rudder (always on), so the rudder Stick will be canceled by itself in the rudder channel output (4th channel). once this is on, moving the rudder stick will have no effect on the monitor page.
- Mix a chosen "spoiler" switch -> rudder (always on). Adjust the % amount and offset to set them to the open and closed positions -- you can adjust a mid position through setting up a curve, if you care to.
- Mix the spoiler switch -> AXU1 adjusted like the last mix so the two spoiler channels follow each other. Keep in mind, once spoilers break the laminar flow, their affect is practically "on" or "off" -- unlike flaps, there isn't much to feathering them out.
You should now have throttle/nothing on the left stick, spoilers on a switch, elevator/rudder on the right stick.
If you want to put throttle on a switch, create a mix+switch mapping like you did for the spoiler switch.
So finish setting her up and find a nice blue patch of sky to frame her in